"The Best TV Show That's Ever Been"

So says Amy Poehler, and she isn't alone in thinking Cheers is pretty much perfect. On the thirtieth anniversary of the show's premiere, GQ sat down with just about everyone who made it and asked them about creating Sam and Diane, the birth of Norm!, Woody Harrelson's one-night stands, and many other secrets of what became TV's funniest guy show of all time

On September 30, 1982, NBC premiered a new sitcom called Cheers, a smartly written show about a bar owned by a retired relief pitcher named Sam Malone. Created by director James Burrows and writer-producers Glen and Les Charles, Cheers would become the last blast of pre-irony prime-time. There was no callous snark, no deconstructive riffs, and only a handful of time-stamped pop-culture references. For the most part, people sat around a bar and talked. But despite its elemental simplicity, the show sparked a quiet revolution in the way TV comedy was produced, with each half-hour episode playing into a soap-style arc of love, death, and bar-bets that would go on for eleven seasons. "It was something bigger than a sitcom," says early Cheers writer-producer Sam Simon, who'd later help develop The Simpsons. "It was a sweeping narrative. [Nowadays], producers sit down with the network at the beginning of the year and talk about the arc of the show. That's because of Glen and Les and Jimmy."

After an initial season of low ratings, Cheers would grow into a Nielsens-climbing, Emmy-gobbling cultural smash, thanks in large part to the show's central relationship, between Sam and his "aspiring poet" waitress, Diane Chambers, who drove each other crazy via a series of hook-ups, break-ups, and occasional slap-fests. At a time when just a few million viewers can make a TV hit, it's hard to understate just how mega Cheers was. By 1993, at the end of its eleven-season run, it was earning a now unheard-of 26 million viewers per week. (The top network sitcom today, The Big Bang Theory, averages 18 million; cable sitcoms get by on a few million.) It was that rare pop-culture phenomenon that seemed to appeal to everyone, from the guy who recognized himself in Norm, to one of the America's greatest novelists, Kurt Vonnegut. The author was a fan and so was Prince and so were politicians Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, who both made cameos. The Bull Finch, the Boston bar shown at the beginning of each episode, racked up millions of dollars in tie-in and tourism money. "And they're still pouring in there," says Dukakis. "With all due respect to Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall, I think it continues to be the most popular attraction in Boston."

Even if you've never seen Cheers (and, by the way, all 275 episodes are now streaming on Netflix) you've seen its lineage. Amy Poehler and Mike Schur (creators of Parks Recreation), Bill Lawrence (Scrubs), Dan Harmon (Community), and Shawn Ryan (The Shield) are all fans, if not downright scholars, of Cheers. "I hope and assume that every good comedy writer, no matter the age, has a moment where they discover how great Cheers is," says Poehler, who regularly watches Cheers episodes in her Parks Recreation trailer. "And I would encourage any young person getting into comedy to sit down and watch it."

Three decades after the show's premiere, nearly 40 _Cheers _cast members, writers, and producers talked to GQ about what might just be the greatest sitcom of all time (no offense, Seinfeld and The Simpsons). Here's the story of how three guys walked into a bar and created a classic.

_In the late '70s, budding TV director James Burrows and Glen and Les Charles, two English-major brothers from Nevada, were working on the sitcom Taxi. Toward the end of its run, their agent suggested the three stop working for others and create a show of their own. _

**Glen Charles **(co-creator): Taxi was very difficult, because we were serving the ecutive producers, and we were trying to serve our own idea of what was funny and what was a good story. It kind of splits your focus. Jimmy was an in-house director_,_ and we were producers, and we had a lot of communication together.

**Les Charles **(co-creator): We'd always gotten along extremely well. I think we felt like contemporaries—like we were in the same college class, and suffered a lot of the same injuries and blows to our egos.

**Glen Charles: **We were a Jew and two Mormons, so we kind of banded together. We felt persecuted [laughs].

Jimmy Burrows(co-creator/director): We wanted to call our company that: "A Jew and two Mormons." But unfortunately, it was taken [laughs].

Glen Charles_: __Fawlty Towers _was a favorite at that time, and so we started talking about hotel stories, and we found that a lot of the action was happening in the hotel bar. We actually thought of that while we were in a bar: "Why would anyone ever leave here?"

Burrows: We also knew that we wanted to have a Tracy-Hepburn relationship.

**Les Charles: **We talked about putting this bar out in the desert somewhere, or in a small town, but once we were looking at a city, we immediately went to Boston. It hadn't been used very much on television, and we wanted a city with some charm—a city that would have that English-style sort of pub in it. [Plus], it was a sports-crazy city. Everything seemed right about it.

When we went in to sell the show, we had to give some prototype the network could latch onto. [We mentioned] those light-beer commercials, where they used to show a bunch of athletes hanging around in a bar. That wasn't what we had in mind at all, but we thought that would get the thing rolling.

Michael Zinberg(development ecutive, NBC): When they came in and [pitched the show], you could feel the room shudder. "What kind of show would be in a bar? How do we handle all the alcohol?" But the Charles brothers very clearly said, "This isn't about the place. This is about a family; it just happens not to be a group of brothers and sisters."

**Warren Littlefield **(vice president, NBC): The network was really hungry. CBS was in a renaissance of comedy, with MAS*H, One Day at a Time, and The Jeffersons. ABC had Mork Mindy, Barney Miller, and Taxi. So the desire to work with Burrows-Charles was really to change NBC's identity, to say, "We want to be in the sophisticated-adult-comedy business."

Burrows: When I got the first draft of the pilot from Les and Glen, I said to my wife, "Oh, my God, these guys have brought radio back to television." They had written this smart, intellectual story. I'd never seen anything like that on TV before—just guys sitting around, talking.

The first parts to be cast were reformed alcoholic and unrepentant babe hound Sam Malone—who was originally conceived as a "Stanley Kowalski type"—and Diane Chambers, the newly dumped know-it-all who, in the pilot, is reduced to waiting tables at Cheers. Burrows and the Charles' brothers subjected the finalists—Shelley Long, Ted Danson, former football player Fred Dryer (Hunter), William Devane (Knots Landing), Julia Duffy (Newhart) and film actress Lisa Eichhorn—to a grueling month of audtions, with Long and Danson the ultimate winners.

Glen Charles: We wanted to introduce the bar and the people in it through Diane's eyes. She was the audience's guide.

**Shelley Long **(Diane Chambers): I was doing the movie _Night Shift _when I read Cheers. I was not looking for a sitcom, because the philosophy at that point was that you had to make a choice: Were you going to do movies or TV? You couldn't cross over. Then this script came along, and it was the best TV script I'd ever read.

**Ted Danson **(Sam Malone): I was actively looking for work. I got called in at the last second to do a guest spot on_Taxi_, and Jimmy, Les, and Glen were on the Paramount lot, putting together Cheers. I ran over and met them. It was one of the few times that I didn't doubt myself—even though it took a month to get the part.

**Long: **Before the audition, I grabbed the dress I'd been planning to wear, only to realize that the waistband had been stretched to double it's normal size. But I didn't have an alternative and I was running late, so I just put a belt on and hoped it would be okay. When I met Ted, I realized too late that it was so blousy that I was giving him quite the view. I think it got us off to a really great start.

Danson: I was too terrified to notice she had breasts. I do remember that I was eating a sandwich.

**Burrows: **Usually, [actors] went into the casting office of the network, which was death. We literally did a stage presentation: We used the Bosom Buddies set, because they had a bar, put chairs in front, and had it catered. That was [our agent] Bob Broder's idea: Give them a little free wine and food, and they'll respond to it.

Glen Charles: Shelley was everybody's choice right away, but there was controversy about Ted. He was clearly not a football player, and not only physically. He didn't bring that attitude, that mentality. At the time, there was a [Red Sox] relief pitcher named Bill Lee, the "Spaceman." He was kind of nuts, as we found out a lot of relievers are. So [changing Sam's profession] gave us a very offbeat athlete—one with a lot of intelligence. He wasn't the sloth that scratches his armpits, which had been our original impulse. It made his treatment of Diane early on kind of intentional: He was trying to bug the hell out of her.

**Sam Simon **(writer-producer): In television, and especially in a situation comedy, you kind of play yourself, or at least the essence of yourself. And Ted isn't Sam Malone at all. He was a little bit insecure—not in a bad way, but not a jock. That was a challenge for him.

Danson: It took me at least two years to feel, "Oh. I know how to play this now. I get it." Because there was an ease and an arrogance to Sam, and I was not a womanizer; I didn't date a lot. If I kissed somebody, I was basically married from that point on. [But] I maintain that I got Sam because I was teamed with Shelley. She was really unique. You can't imagine anyone else playing Diane. She was Diane.

Long: I thought Diane was kind of tough in the pilot's script, so I made an effort in that first episode to soften my delivery and make her as feminine as possible. That came up for [a few] episodes, and then, I think, everybody agreed that Diane could still be smart without being tough.

Les Charles _(co-creator): _Shelley knew who her character was and had a much surer idea of herself than the rest of the cast. She was able to carry the show in the beginning while the others were finding their way. That's the way it worked: The actors got closer and closer to their characters. Or maybe their characters got closer to the people.

George Wendt: My agent said, "It's a small role, honey. It's one line. Actually, it's one word." The word was "beer." I was having a hard time believing I was right for the role of "the guy who looked like he wanted a beer." [laughs] So I went in, and they said, "It's too small a role. Why don't you read this other one?" And it was a guy who never left the bar.

Les Charles: I worked at a bar after college, and we had a guy who came in every night. He wasn't named Norm, [but he] was always going to have just one beer, and then he'd say, "Maybe I'll just have one more." We had to help him out of the bar every night. His wife would call, and he'd always say, "Tell her I'm not here." I think that was the closest we had to a character based on one guy.

John Ratzenberger(Cliff Clavin): I'd spent ten years in London, writing and performing my own comedy shows. They gave me the Cheers [scenes], and I thought it was the springboard for chatting about the show, because in England, that's what you do. So I walk in, and I'm looking around, and Jimmy Burrows said, "What are you looking at? You're not here to have a conversation; you're here to audition." At that second, I felt all the blood rush out of my body. I did a horrible job. As I was leaving, the casting director says, "Thank you, John," and my eight-by-ten was already in a wastebasket. But the writer part of me turned around and said, "Do you have a bar know-it-all?" Because in the bars in my neighborhood where my father hung out, there was always a bar know-it-all. Glen said, "What are you talking about?" I just launched into an improvisation of what [became Cliff].

Rhea Perlman: I had done Taxi, and I did a little one-act play in New York that the Charles brothers came to see. In Taxi, I was a nice girl, and in the play I was tougher, like a tomboy. That's when they started thinking of me for Carla, even though I had to go through all the horrible auditioning.

I can't say I based [Carla] on anybody I knew. She was so foulmouthed and mean, just said what was on her mind. So I guess Carla is somebody I always wished I could be at the right moment, the one who always has the perfect comeback.

**Wendt: **Nick Colasanto [Coach] was nearly 60 years old and had a long career as an actor and TV director. One day when we were workshopping with Jim about the characters' possible backstories, Nick [who was sober] said that when he had been drinking, every time one of the regulars walked into his favorite New York spot, everyone would yell out his name. So it stuck for Norm.

Ratzenberger: [Once] I said, "Nick, how do you do what you do?" He says, "Ratz, every day, when I pull in the parking lot and I get out of the car, I'm 12 years old." If you see Nick's episodes now, think of that: Whatever the line or situation is, he'd react like a 12-year-old. Perfect, but so simple.

Cheers premiered on September 30, 1982, at 9 p.m., _finished last in its time slot, and spent the first season in the ratings basement. NBC president Brandon Tartikoff championed the show, as did Emmy voters, who named it Outstanding Comedy Series in its first season. _

Rhea Perlman: We all trusted that we were in a show that was going to go on at least as long as Taxi. We were just oblivious, like kids at a camp.

We didn't know that we were riding on thin ice the whole time. Maybe Ted and Shelley did, but they didn't act like it.

Long: When the ratings weren't going up, it drew my attention, but it didn't worry me. Today, I think it probably would, because you don't have Brandon Tartikoff rallying the troops and saying, "This is a great show. This show has to stay." [So] I didn't feel like the rug was going to be pulled out from under us. The rug seemed to be in pretty firm condition.

Thomas Lofaro (assistant director): There was a lot riding on a network half-hour in 1982; ratings numbers and revenue streams were different then. But you could see the audience building. On the mornings when we'd get the ratings, they'd be on the table with the newspapers. It was very theatrical. Jimmy would say, "Don't worry, they're going up."

Les Charles: We started to get mail from people who would say things like, "If you break up [Sam and Diane], I'll never watch this show again." They were intensely interested in Sam and Diane's relationship, as if it were two real people.

**David Isaacs **(writer/producer): Maybe two weeks into the regular production, Jim came up to eat lunch with us and said, "Sam and Diane is our money. We have to go back to them, regardless of what the story is, [every] episode."

**Simon: **It happened by accident, and those three guys were smart enough to see it and make the show about them. If they had set out to make a show about a man and woman with amazing chemistry, it'd be like, "Well, good luck. If it doesn't work the first episode, you're screwed."

Cheri Steinkellner(writer-ecutive producer, credited as Cheri Eichen on the show) It was a really fair fight between those two characters. Look at the way the credits were placed: Upper and lower, right and left, so that neither was first, and neither was last. That was all by design.

**Heide Perlman **(writer-producer; sister of Rhea): I don't think any sitcom had done that. It wasn't quite Tracy-Hepburn, because she was a tight-ass, and he was a hound.

**Les Charles: **I don't mean to get psychoanalytic here, but there is a similarity in the Sam and Diane relationship to the relationship of our parents. Our mother was prim and proper, a voracious reader who was always trying to improve her mind. Our father liked to hang out at the bar and watch sports. I don't think he ever read a book.

Burrows: Half the people wanted to go to bed with Diane, and half the people wanted to kill her, including Sam.

Danson: You could identify with Sam and Diane on so many levels. Women's libbers loved to hate Sam, but he was so transparently, painfully who he was that you could still laugh at him, even if you were a feminist. People who were bamboozled by women totally associated with Sam, [as did] people who thought they were God's gift to women. It brought different crowds in.

**Long: **Our audience was so tuned in to every move, because the flirting between Sam and Diane during the first season was totally outrageous. There was talk about "Would it be right to advance the relationship, or could that condemn the relationship?" I put my two cents in—big surprise—and said, "In a real relationship, you take two steps forward, one step back. So just because we take two steps forward and get all the benefit from that doesn't mean we can't go back or to the side." Ultimately, that's what worked.

**Heide Perlman: **Some of the tension went out of it when they were together. It's harder to write two people happy and in love than two people fighting and driving each other crazy. Moonlighting had the same problem: Everyone wants the two characters to be together, but then once they are, it's not that much fun.

**Ken Levine _(writer/producer): _**The final two episodes of the first season were shot in one night and build to that scene where Sam and Diane are fighting—"Are you as turned on as I am?" "More"—and they kiss. The audience went absolutely crazy nuts. I turned to David Isaacs and said, "We've peaked. There's nothing we can do with these two that is going to evoke that much of a reaction."

Burrows: If Sam couldn't bed a woman in a year, then he was not the cocksman we wanted him to be. So he had to do that.

Burrows: When the summer reruns happened, people who had already seen Simon Simon and Magnum, P.I. started to watch our show. We had a big party in our office, because we got to ninth place.

Danson: I remember this one news clip of a small station somewhere. They decided to put something else in _Cheers'_s lot, and there were demonstrations outside the station. It was like, "Oh. That's pretty cool." And then the show just kind of exploded.

From its first season, Cheers' writing staff was one of the most decorated—and envied—creative teams in television. Over the years, its line-up included vets like David Lloyd (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and Jerry Belson (The Dick Van Dyke Show), and upstarts like David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee, who'd later go on to create Frasier_. _

Ratzenberger: It was the last generation of writers that had grown up reading books instead of watching TV. So you weren't getting anything that was derivative of I Love Lucy or Happy Days. You were getting real characters [like those] they read in P.G. Wodehouse or Dickens or somewhere along the line, because they had all grown up with a love of literature.

Wendt, Les, Glen, and Danson.

Isaacs: We worked in Glen's office, which was set up like a sitting room. There was a desk that only Glen sat behind, and Les sat in a chair by the window, and he always had one of those plastic coffee stirrers that he chewed on.

**Simon: **There could be chaos going on, people pitching jokes, and Les would be picking what he wanted and whispering it into the writers' assistant's ear. And at the end of the night, the script was put together. I learned how to run a room by watching him.

David Lee(writer-ecutive producer): On some shows, [the producers] say, "Oh, you gotta have 10 jokes per page." Glen and Les would go, "You know, it's better to get rid of the 'Fifty percenters,'—the jokes that are just chuckles—and be satisfied with the hundred percenters." If you have enough lesser jokes in the way, you actually start diminishing the value of the really good ones.

Tim Berry(producer-director): They threw out more great material than you'll ever know, because every day, they'd be rewriting and honing and polishing. Some things that would get a huge laugh at the table were gone by day three or four.

**Phoef Sutton **(writer-producer): It was a very tough room. If you pitched bad stuff, they'd lacerate you. There were long silences. I didn't speak for the first three months on staff, because I was so in awe of everybody.

Dan Staley(writer-producer): David Lloyd would write a whole script off the top of his head. He'd sit there and say, "Diane enters, and then Diane and Sam, bum bum bum, and then something else happens..." He'd pitch out a bunch of jokes rapid-fire, and occasionally point to someone and demand a joke, and then just move on. His whole thing was always to get out [early].

**Bill Steinkellner **(writer-ecutive producer): The goal was excellence. And, if possible, to go home with the lights still off.

Heide Perlman: I don't remember what script it was, but at the Monday table read, the [opening] teaser didn't work. We went back and had to think of a new teaser, and [after] four hours, five hours, we weren't landing on anything. People were saying, "Maybe we should come back to it." And it was probably Glen who said, "What are we, cowards?" You had to do it, no matter how long it took.

Lee: On The Jeffersons, you would give your notes to the director, and he'd go, "Right, right," and then turn around and go to the actors and say, "Oh, those fucking writers. They want to change this." And then the director would come back [to the writers] and go, "Oh, those actors. They won't do a thing I ask them." You get this weird us-against-them [mentality].

And when we got to Cheers, everybody could talk to everybody. Now, granted, if you were smart you had a sense of where you were on the totem pole, you watched your comments and obviously deferred to the bosses. But if I saw something that Shelley had done that I thought was particularly good, or if a writer had a suggestion for a way she might be able to do it better, you got to tell her that. The only rule was you had to do it so everybody could hear; there were no private conversations. It had to be open with everybody. It really fostered this feeling that we were all in it together.

Shawn Ryan(creator of The Shield): _Cheers _was one of the first shows where I paid attention to the writers because their [work] was better than everything else I was watching. The writers weren't afraid to let a joke fall slightly flat if it advanced the characters.

Glen Charles: For better or for worse, I see more of Seinfeld's influence now [on comedies]—not joke-jokes, but people airing very personal, subjective issues, and sometimes things close without even a joke. We never would have done that. We'd be there until two in the morning, making sure it had a button on the act. I'm not making a value judgment. It just seems to be more of a trend now.

Christopher Lloyd(co-creator, Modern Family; son of David Lloyd) The writers had to tell stories that didn't make the audience ask, "How do these people have so much time to be in a bar all the time?" I think that was the genius of that show—that you loved being in their company, and you never asked those questions. You never asked why nobody ever paid for a beer. You went with it, because the spirit of the show was so great.

Simon: In the opening of season three, when Sam comes in drunk [after a breakup with Diane], that's when Cheers became a saga.

Les Charles: Back in the old days, there was a rule that every TV episode had to be complete in itself, so you could tune into a television show for the first time and be able to enjoy that show and know where you were. And we started doing continuing stories and cliffhangers and evolving relationships and so on, and we may have been partly responsible for what's going on now, where if you miss the first episode or two, you are lost. You have to wait until you can get the whole thing on DVD and catch up with it. If that blood is on our hands, I feel kind of badly about it. It can be very frustrating.

Kurt Vonnegut (from a 1991 interview): I would rather have written Cheers than anything I've written.

**Steinkellner: **We thought, "Let's get [Vonnegut] to write an episode!" Then the whole discussion came up: "But what if it sucks? We can't re-write it!"

Cheers got a big ratings boost when The Cosby Show debuted just before it in the fall of 1984. Ratings continued to grow, and the show was thriving until, on February 12, 1985, _the cast arrived for a taping to learn that the 61-year-old Colasanto had died of a heart attack. _

Burrows: Nick was sick when he was cast.

Wendt: He'd been getting kind of thin. [Earlier in the season], they called us all into Glen and Les' office, and they told us his heart muscle was sort of dying, but they said he had been cleared to come back to work. They said, "Well, it could mean six weeks, could mean six years." So we were all like, "Oh. Well, that's a drag, but it seems like he's ready to come back to work." We were [hoping for] six years. It turned out it was six weeks.

**Danson: **When Nick had heart disease, he was getting less and less oxygen. There wasn't a surface on that set that didn't have his lines written down. There was one episode where a friend of Coach dies, and he says, "It's as if he's still with us now." Nick had written the line on the wood slats by the stairs the actors would use to enter the studio. Nicky dies, and the next year, we're all devastated, and the first night we come down the stairs, right there was his line: "It's as if he were with us now." And so every episode, we'd go by it and pat it as we'd come down to be introduced to the audience.

_Sam and Diane's will-they-won't-they relationship

spawned a gazillion sitcom copycats._

And then, one year, they repainted the sets and they painted over the line. People almost quit. Seriously. They were so emotionally infuriated that that had been taken away from them.

_The producers had to quickly come up with a replacement character: Woody Boyd, an Indiana farm boy who'd just moved to the big city. _

Woody Harrelson _(Woody Boyd): _I was 23, and I was in L.A. while on hiatus [as an understudy] from Biloxi Blues on Broadway. The guy that I'd been studying with had been fired for horsing around on stage with Matthew Broderick, and they were really anxious to get me back into the play. So I was in a great situation, and at the time, I definitely wasn't thinking about television. I had heard about Cheers, of course, but I never watched it. So I watched two episodes, and I was like, "Oh my God. This is really good."

Lori Openden(casting director): They wanted the replacement to play 21—just of drinking age. But more than anything, they wanted him to be sweet and doltish. I saw hundreds of actors. But I went back through my notes, and when I met Woody [Harrelson], before I brought him to the producers, I wrote, "My work is done." At the time I met him, he was an innocent in the big world—just a different kind of a guy. And that was very much who Woody Boyd was.

Harrelson: At the audition, I didn't know I was going into a room with [all the producers], so I was blowing my nose when I walked in. The room erupted in laughter, and somebody said, "This is Woody." And of course, the part was named Woody. So that put me in a good position.

Casey_: ___Harrelson comes in to read looking like he just came off a basketball court. He had on athletic shorts and unlaced high-tops, and I'm going, "This is so not the character." And then he read, and he brought this beautiful innocence to the whole thing, and when [his character] heard the news that Coach had died, he cried a little. No actor had done that.

Harrelson: I was going with the flow, being in the moment. Most of all, I was unconcerned, because I knew I was going back to do Broadway, and that was my dream. That's the best way to audition for anything: When your back-up plan is your dream, you know?

**Burrows: **In the first episode, [Woody Boyd] leaps over the bar, and that pissed Teddy off: "This young whippersnapper..." Teddy started going to the gym.

**Danson: **I don't know if I went to the gym, [but] Woody is 24, and at that point I was like 37, which is when you realize you're no longer 24. So in walked Woody, who was instantly great, but offstage, it was [all] testosterone. There was a half-court [on the lot], and the guys used to play basketball right before the show. We took him out to give him a lesson, and he kicked our asses. All right, we'll arm-wrestle. I still have, like, tendinitis in my elbow. He was just wiping the floor with me. John, who has good, strong legs, leg-wrestled him. Woody cleaned everybody's clock in everything. Then we got less physical and went to chess, and he whipped our asses with chess.

I didn't have a brother, so Woody became my brother. And brothers can be incredibly competitive and knock the shit out of each other, but they know they won't cross a line. I loved him.

Jackie Swanson(Kelly "Kelly Kelly Kelly" Gaines, Woody Boyd's equally simple love interest): Women were in pursuit of Woody. It seems like he always had a new girl visiting the set. I remember seeing, at different times, Moon Zappa, Ally Sheedy, Penelope Ann Miller, and Glenn Close. I don't know that he was dating all of them. I did have a crush on him. Who didn't? Even Jimmy did.

**Harrelson: ** I was very excited by this newfound ability to hang out with gals who probably wouldn't have hung out with me before. I became a party animal. You couldn't do what I did now because of all the tweeting and Facebooking. All the shit I did back then, I'd be hung from the rafters.

**Wendt: ** Woody brought this impishness. He brought it out in Ted, especially.

**Danson: **I'll tell you about the worst day of my life. Shelley and Rhea were carrying that week's episode, and the guys were just, "Let's play hooky." We'd never done anything wrong before. John had a boat, so we met at Marina del Rey at 8 a.m. We all called in sick, and Jimmy caught on and was so pissed. Woody and I were already stoned, and Woody said, "You want to try some mushrooms?" I'd never had them, so I'm handed this bag and I took a fistful. On our way to Catalina, we hit the tail end of a hurricane, and even people who were sober were getting sick. Woody and I thought we were going to die for three hours. I sat next to George, and every sixty seconds or so he'd poke me and go, "Breathe." [gasp] And I'd come back to life.

**Harrelson: ** I was a little worried about him. It looked like his face was melting. I think I may have been freaking a little myself, but I had to be cool about it.

**Wendt: ** We got into serious trouble for that. I think we thought Jimmy and Les and Glen would have more of a sense of humor about it. We did it because Ted was doing it. He's sort of a reluctant leader. He didn't try to flex his influence. He's just eminently followable.

**Danson: **My job playing Sam Malone was to let the audience in, to love my bar full of people. And that informed my life. I mean, we're so different [in the cast], some of us. Miles apart. [But] when I see anyone from those days, I tap into that instant love for them. I don't care what they do, what they say, how different we are: I love them, because it was eight hours a day, eleven years, making each other giggle and laugh and being a team. There was no weak link.

_In the third-season premiere in September 1984, a distraught Diane—who'd been driven to a mental institution—returned to the bar with cocky, uptight psychiatrist Frasier Crane. Fans were wary at first, but in future seasons, he and his equally repressed wife, Dr. Lilith Sternin (who would arrive two years later as a series regular) would become hugely popular. _

**Burrows: **We'd get Sam and Diane into some predicament, and then over the summer, when the boys would start writing, we thought, "How do we get them back together?" That's how Frasier evolved.

Les Charles: We'd never had a real threat to Sam and Diane's relationship. I think our inspiration [for Frasier] was the role Ralph Bellamy used to play in Cary Grant movies—the guy the lady falls in love with but it isn't real. You just know he doesn't have the sexual dynamism Grant does.

**Kelsey Grammer **(Dr. Frasier Crane): The first thing I thought [when I read the script] was that Frasier was an intellectual at some points but also an Everyman—flawed and very insecure. The other thing I thought was that when he decided to love, he was completely—what is it Othello says?—"perpled in the extreme." What made him endearing in the end was that his love for Diane was without question.

[But] when I auditioned for the twenty people that were in the room, I didn't get a single laugh. I thought, "Holy shit. I'm done. I blew this completely." I put the script down, thanked everybody, and said, "I'm going to go and see if I can get some laughs out on the street." But then they sent me a bottle of champagne and said, "Welcome to Cheers."

Rebecca was more like a (hot) sister to Sam.

Long: There were two actors [they liked], and Ted and I read with them, and it was so obvious that it was Kelsey

Glen Charles: Kelsey told me one time [that] after his first season, he was in a bar, and this guy walks up and says, "Are you that pin dick that plays Frasier?" He was actually upset that Frasier was coming between Sam and Diane.

**Les Charles: **That was a really common reaction to Kelsey. We'd get horrible fan mail, or anti-fan mail, about Kelsey breaking up Sam and Diane or coming between them.

Grammer: I was not really privy to it, and I'm glad they kept it from me.

Staley_: ___My biggest shock, when I first showed up at the show, was the disconnect between Frasier and Kelsey. Because Kelsey was just this lovely, friendly beach guy who would [say], "Yeah, I'm in Hermosa this weekend. Come on down, hang out with Kels."

Jay Thomas (who played Carla's husband, Eddie LeBec): I would see Kelsey sometimes at 5 o'clock in the morning with no shoes on, pushing a sports car down the street with a half [passed-out] woman in the passenger seat. I'm pulling in to get gas, and I go, "Hey Kelsey! What are you doing?" And he goes, "Well hey, how are you?"

**Long: **In the third year, right before we started the season, I told them I was pregnant. And they were saying, "Oh, well, we could do this, and we could do that, and Frasier could be the father." And I said, "No, I don't think that's right. You said Hepburn and Tracy to us when we started, and I think this should be Tracy's baby." I guess Kelsey had been told that, and he was really upset about it. I talked to him on the phone once and I said, "You know, this was not about you, the actor; this was about Sam and Diane."

Grammer (from his 1996 autobiography, So Far...): Shelley was convinced that Diane and Sam should be together, that it was a terrible mistake to break them up...Shelly's efforts to get me off the show were relentless. I learned after read-throughs she would insist the writers took out every laugh I had.

**Long: **Oh, that's so wrong. He's a brilliant talent, and he was so wonderfully funny on the show. I even watched Frasier, you know? I have no idea how he got that idea other than me speaking up one time and saying, "No, I really don't think it should be Frasier's baby."

It's just a crime that people don't take the time and make the effort to have a conversation if it's bothering them that much. I wish he had said something, but he never did. You know, it's too bad.

**Grammer: **Who knows? Maybe it _was _all my problem! I don't know. Maybe none of that was really true. But, early on, I did have a feeling that she would've been happier if I hadn't been on the show. Once Frasier was no longer a threat to what I think she felt was her arc for Ted, it was great. [Shelley and I] made up sometime after.

Bill Steinkellner: [Cheri and I] wrote the first script that Lilith was in. . She was in a little bit of the first scene, and then she left. The next year came, they said, "Let's get a girlfriend for Frasier."

Bebe Neuwirth(Lilith Sternin): In 1985, I was doing a pre-Broadway run of Sweet Charity [that] started in LA and had four months off before opening on Broadway. So I stayed and tried to rustle up whatever work I could while I was waiting. The first job was on Simon Simon, and the second was Cheers. I don't know that I had seen it. But my parents, who are very smart, very sophisticated, they loved Cheers.

In New York, in musicals, I was playing parts that would never have been described the way Lilith was in the breakdown. [I thought], "What do you mean, 'not so good-looking?'" [laughs] She was kind of drab—hair straight back in a bun, uptight, no sense of humor. The musical stuff I'd go up for was always funny, sexy, tough-as-nails, heart-of-gold characters. So when I first auditioned for Lilith, I really struggled. Then her voice occurred to me in my head, and I started reading it out loud to myself, and it made me laugh. That was her.

Thomas: I'm doing Cheers, having the greatest time of my life, and one day I get a phone call from Jimmy. I knew they were deciding [about] whether to add me or Bebe to the cast full-time, and I thought he was calling with good news. He said, like in a movie, "Are you sitting down?" And he goes, "Look, we're not going to have you back on the show. And it has nothing to do with Rhea."

**Levine: **Jay did a morning radio show, and somebody said [on the air], "It must be great being on Cheers," and Jay said something like, "Yeah, it's not so great," and he mentioned having to kiss Rhea Perlman.

Thomas: [Listeners] would go, "What's it like to kiss Carla?" Not Rhea—they were talking about Carla. And my joke what that I got combat's pay to kiss her.

**Levine: **Rhea came up to my office and she was furious—I'd never seen her like this. She said, "I want him off the show."

Rhea Perlman: That's not true. I loved Jay Thomas as Eddie LeBec. But there was a point where they [thought] maybe we would live together, and I didn't like the idea of Carla being with somebody because that would make you feel like [you're] not part of the people in the bar.

Thomas: Look, I made jokes about kissing Murphy Brown [too]. But if that's what cost me my job, my wife will probably say, "Hey asshole, I told you so." [Eddie exits in "Death Takes a Holidy on Ice," when he's run over by a Zamboni.]

Grammer's partying was getting out of control; there were a couple of arrests—one of which ended with Grammer pleading no contest to cocaine possesion—in 1988 and 1990. An unsuccessful on-set intervention was held by the show's producers and cast.

Glen Charles: Kelsey was going through a divorce and child-custody issues. He had some problems.

**Dan O'Shannon **_(writer/producer; ecutive producer on Modern Family): _He would ooze into the studio, his life all out of sorts. Jimmy would say "Action," and he would snap into Frasier and expound in this very erudite dialogue and be pitch-perfect. And Jimmy would yell "Cut!" and he would ooze back into Kelsey—glazed-over eyes, half asleep, going through whatever he was going through. It was the most amazing transformation I'd ever seen.

**Bebe Neuwirth **(Dr. Lilith Sternin): I really loved Kelsey. It wasn't a romantic love, but there was something about him. It's very difficult to see someone you care about having a hard time. Some days were better than others. One time they had to shut down for the day. I can only wing it after I know what I'm doing, and there was a complicated scene with lots of props, and during rehearsal nothing was happening. I thought, Jesus, you have to be like this today?

**Levine: **The only time I felt affected [by his behavior] was when an episode we wrote where Kelsey was really erratic all week, and it was a really tough filming night, because he didn't remember his lines. We cobbled a performance [from the footage], but it was difficult.

**Lee: **The [effects of the] first intervention lasted for a while, but then it didn't take. And in retrospect, the guy on the second intervention [during the spin-off series Frasier] said, "The problem with the first one was that Kelsey walked into the room [and] the interventionist said, ‘These are your friends. I think you need to go off to get some help.' and Kelsey just said, ‘Okay.'" No one in the room got to air their grievances or let him know how serious it was, or be specific about what problems they were experiencing in their relationships with him.

Grammer: I went and did some things [rehab], and then of course my life didn't change that much [for a while], but I never missed work. One time I went out for a few cocktails before we shot, and my words were slurred a bit. I feel forever apologetic about that.

_In the summer of 1986, Cheers began work on a fifth season, without knowing if Long would renew her contract. _

**Long: **I'd gotten into a routine of going into my dressing room and meditating at lunch. I needed to rest, just let go of all of it. Because I really felt sometimes like I was physically pulling the plot, and it was heavy. I'm sure it didn't look great that I was going into my dressing room at lunch. I wish I could've hung out with the cast and got lunch. But it's not restful for me to be in a public dining room and eat. It's just not. And I was exhausted by the end of the morning because I tried to deliver as much of a performance as I could for each run-through.

**Lofaro: **The fifth season was when things started to get a bit rough, in terms of managing the show. Shelley believed that she was the new Lucille Ball, and she would spend hours after the run-through talking with the writers about her character and the story, just talking it to death. They would indulge her, but they indulged her to a point where they couldn't stand it anymore.

Glen Charles: Shelley liked to discuss things. It was never a tantrum. But it did take a lot of talking, and I think the biggest problem was with the rest of the cast, because we'd have a reading at the table, and immediately she'd want to talk about it. The normal procedure was for Jimmy to take the cast down and start blocking it, so we could see it on its feet. So that indulgence on our part, I think, created a schism between Shelley and the rest of the cast.

Rhea Perlman: It's not really something I can talk about, to tell you the truth. I can't go there. I don't think it's worth it, at this point in life.

Long: There was scuttlebutt about me talking too much and being passionate about Diane. But I thought, "That's my job. That's what I'm supposed to do.... Don't tell me not to get involved in the discussion."

**Danson: **Shelley's process would have infuriated you if it had been mean or if it hadn't been purposeful. But it was purposeful—it was her way of being Diane—and there's not a mean bone in Shelley's body. I had trouble hanging around her until we stood onstage together, and then I was in heaven.

On December 16, 1986, Long announced she was leaving the show. The show was so popular and the announcement so shocking that it became national news.

**Les Charles: **Diane was not a lovable character, and I think people transposed that onto Shelley and blamed her for breaking up a show they really loved.

Long: The Cheers writers were the finest in television. But I felt like I was repeating myself; it bothered me a little bit. And I was getting movie offers, which made people think, "Oh, she's so snooty. She thinks she's going to do movies." I did an interview with a woman writer, and she had this abrasive attitude. I had spoken with her over the five years that we'd done Cheers, so I said, "Are you upset that I'm leaving the show?" And there was a long pause, and she said, "Yes, I guess I am."

But most people tended to understand, because I had a two-year-old baby, and I wanted to spend more time with my family, which was the other reason I left the show. And I did spend more time with my family. It was a good decision. It was really good.

**Levine: **There was a lot of concern that Shelley leaving would cause the show's downfall, so everyone's livelihood was at stake. It's funny, there were actors who said that she drove them nuts, yet they were also mad that she was leaving. It's like the restaurant where the food is so bad and the portions are so small.

Lee: Our jaws dropped when we found out she was leaving. From a writing standpoint, you would look at [Sam and Diane's] scenes and go, "That's the glue that's holding everything together."

**Danson: **I was scared. Could I be any good? Would people want to watch one-half of the relationship? She put _Cheers _on the map. Was she the entire show?

**Sutton: **I believe we wrote two endings to her finale, and there were dummy scripts handed out that had the ending where they stayed together. It was probably the first time a show did what they now on shows like_ Lost_, where they try to keep it secret, because we wanted to surprise people. [And] it was a possibility that maybe, at the last minute, Shelley would decide to stay.

**Casey: ** We shot an ending where they got married. Then we released the audience, and shot the actual ending of her leaving. So anybody who was at the last show was probably out there saying, "Hey, they got married!"

DIANE CHAMBERS (turning around): "Have a good life?" Well, that's something you say when something's over. Sam, I'm going away for six months. That's all. So no more of this "Have a good life" stuff.

SAM: You never know. You could die. I could die. The world could end. One of us could bump our heads and wander the streets for the rest of our life with amnesia. Or maybe one of us will decide they want something else.

DIANE: None of those things will happen. I'll be back here. I will. I'll see you in six months. Okay?

SAM: Okay.

(Diane leaves)

SAM (to himself): Have a good life.

**Les Charles: **I remember one critic saying, when Shelley walked out that door, "There goes Cheers." And for all we knew, they might have been right. But we said to ourselves, "We're not going to do another romance. We're going to find something different."

The writers came up with Sam selling Cheers to a megaconglomerate, and introduced meltdown-prone striver Rebecca Howe, who would briefly manage the bar. Any concern about ratings dropping after Long left soon dissolved: They got even bigger.

**Jeff Greenberg **(casting director): The producers wanted the opposite of Diane, someone who was grounded and not flighty. And they didn't want another blonde. The first thought I had was, believe it or not, Kirstie Alley, who I'd seen do Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She was great and sultry, and she had those eyes. But she also found a lot of subtle humor in the play that I had not seen before.

Kirstie Alley(Rebecca Howe): I had seen Cheers twice, I think. Ted had so much hair in his widow's peak that I remember thinking, "That dude looks like Eddie Munster." When I got the heads-up that they wanted to see me, I was doing a movie with Sidney Poitier, and I was all full of myself: "I'm a movie star! They'd be lucky to have me." If I'd been watching the show, I'd probably have been nervous.

**Greenberg: **We wanted to keep [her auditions] secret, because we didn't want to shove it in Shelley's face; it was only November, and she was going to be there until March. So we had all these secret meetings. My own assistants didn't even know it was happening. We had her come to the studio on a Saturday, when no one was on the Cheers set, and she did two scenes, one with Ted, and one with Rhea.

Jimmy, Les and Glen loved her, but the network, who gets final word on these things, did not. They didn't see the audition, and didn't consider Kirstie a comic actress. So we had to go through the process of looking at every other actress, [like] Sharon Stone, Kim Cattrall, Marg Helgenberger. And after this long process, NBC finally said, "Well, if they are that passionate about her, how can we deny [them]?"

**Glen Charles: **We wanted her to be the Joan Collins [character], the gorgeous woman who's the boss, and everybody thinks of ways to circumvent her and foul her up.

**Burrows: **When they wrote the character, Rebecca was a real bitch. Then we had the first run-through, and it was not funny. It wasn't funny until Rebecca had to go to her office, and [Kirstie] couldn't get into the door. She kept turning it and it wouldn't turn, and she got frustrated, and I remember us going, "Oh, my God, this is what this character is: a woman of the '80s, during the feminist movement, who thinks she has control of everything, and she can't open a freaking door."

Alley: They started writing Rebecca more like I am—a little klutzy and self-deprecating. That's why it worked; I fit in with the rest of the losers.

**Brian Ellis **(assistant director) Kirstie showed up for the first script reading dressed as Shelley, with a blonde wig on. And it was so funny, that kind of [attitude]: "Okay, she can make fun of herself. This is going to be interesting to see." She fit right in.

Ratzenberger: We gave Kirstie a shotgun. I own shotguns, so it's not foreign to me. George came up with the note on a card: "You're going to have to shoot your way out of here." So, basically saying welcome.

Alley: It was a boys' club, and I do well in boys' clubs. Woody and I instantly hit it off. I was married, but he would show up at my house sometimes and stay over. One night he brought this girl to bang, and then in the middle of the night he decided he didn't want to, so he was knocking on my bedroom door: "Kirs? Kirs? Can you talk to me a minute? I'm just not into this chick." I said, "Woody, you have to take responsibility. I can't coach you into sleeping with her, but you need to go back there, dude." I think she was in the bedroom crying while we were chatting about this.

I had the halfway house. I can't tell you how many nights I spent around my kitchen table, soothing broken hearts.

**Neuwirth: **Kirstie saved me, in a way. [At the time], I had a terrible marriage, and I stayed at her house. She was wonderful—just a kind, big-hearted, filthy girl. Somehow she could be vulgar without being vulgar.

**Alley: **Upstairs, everyone had dressing rooms, and there were bathrooms where you'd take showers before the show. So the big game became getting the door open, so that you could take pictures of nude people. I have the greatest picture of Ted. That was a big caper: There was one person [opening] the door with a butter knife and another person kicking the door in so I could get a photo. He's decapitated, but totally nude. And he's really well-endowed.

Though Sam pursued Rebecca with typical zeal, she preferred wealthy schemers like Robin Colcord, a Trump-like millionaire played by British actor Roger Rees. A Tony-winner, Rees was one of many high-profile guest stars to visit the bar, which became a temporary home to a motley mix of politicians, athletes, and Broadway performers.

Roger Rees (Robin Colcord): I was in a play in the West End of London called _Hapgood, _by Tom Stoppard. I played a Russian particle physicist. So I came over to do the play [in L.A.] and I imagined I would be going straight back to Britain afterwards.

I believe the people from Cheers saw that production, and they [asked if I'd] like to come in and see them. It was probably the hottest day of my life—but being from Britain, I put my suit on with my tie, drove down Melrose to Paramount Studios, and was taken to the writers' room. There were about twenty writers in there, and they were all dressed for the beach. Some were just in shorts. The scales dropped from my eyes: "Oh, I see. This is what goes on in America." I'm very formal, but I think they thought, "Oh, we got the right person."

They said, "Do you like Cheers?" I'd never really seen it. All I knew was that it was a dark brown program on late at night. But I said, "It is indisputably my most favorite program I've ever seen."

Bill Steinkellner: That was the aura of Cheers: It was special. It was more than TV; you could get people to guest on the show you couldn't normally get.

**Cheri Steinkellner: **Somebody would let us know they were a fan, and we'd say, "Let's put him on."

Levine: We heard the first year that Lucille Ball loved Cheers, and we all thought she should play Diane's mom. We thought that would really boost the show. Somehow, the Charles brothers and Jimmy got a meeting with her.

**Glen Charles: **That was really a treat. But she backed out.

**Les Charles: **She said everybody tuning in would expect to see Lucy, and for her to play something so completely different—even a little bit different—would be disappointing to her fans.

**Burrows: **Our first guest star of any notability was [Speaker of the House] Tip O'Neill, followed by Dick Cavett, Those were our major cameos. Gary Hart, Wade Boggs...

****Levine: ****Here's what happened with Wade Boggs : At the end of the [sixth season], NBC asked for another episode, and we needed to slam it together. We thought it would be kind of fun to have a Boston athlete come into the bar, and thought, "Who's the biggest Boston athlete we can get?" And we said, "Wade Boggs." This was March, he was in spring training, but our casting director put in a call to try. If he turns us down, we go on our way. [Boggs] calls back, like, an hour later, and says he got permission from the manager to miss a couple of days.

So he does it, and about a year later, there's a big magazine article about his mistress, who lived out in Anaheim. She talks about how he called her and said, "Good news: I got a free trip to L.A., I'm going to do this Cheers show. And they're going to pay me." So that's why he did it. Then he said, apparently, "Can I borrow a pair of your panties?" and she said, "Why?" And he said, "I promised the guys on the team I could bring back Kirstie Alley's panties."

Andy Ackerman(editor-director): The city held a big parade for us for our 200th-episode anniversary [in 1990]. We were treated like royalty. The governor, Michael Dukakis, was there. They named an alley after Kirstie, and gave us the keys to the city. Everywhere we went: Free food, free drinks. I remember going out to this nightclub and dancing with all the Boston Massachusetts luminaries and having a drink with Ethel Kennedy. It was wild.

**Alley: **One time, I brought Prince to the set. He's a friend of mine, and he asked to come. There were VIP rooms behind the audience, where a lot of the ecs would sit, so I had Prince sitting up there. Everyone wanted to meet him, but he's a little shy. I think Woody went in and shook hands with him, and came down and said, "He isn't even talking to me!" But Jackie Swanson—she had a relationship with Prince, too.

**Swanson: **I've known Prince for many years—I worked on the "Raspberry Beret" video—and Kirstie and I used to fight about him. He once sent a card [saying] he had penned a song about me, called "Palomino Pleasure Ride." I remember bringing this card to work one time and showing Kirstie and saying: "See? Now who's the better friend?" It was so ridiculous. But Prince thought the writing on _Cheers _was smart. And he loved Kelly's headbands.

Harrelson: The thing I remember most was, after taping, we'd all head upstairs, and me, Kelsey, Teddy and George would play foosball. We got into tournaments. It was mind-blowing how aggressive and loud it was—it was foosball, you know? But God, it was fun.

**Grammer: **That all ended as soon as Frasier began. No one from that crowd was really interested. I finally moved the table out to my house, and it ended up being sold with the house. So it's now in the hands of somebody who may not know its intrinsic value.

···

By the time Cheers_ headed into the '90s, the challenge for everyone was how do you keep the show fresh?_

Danson: The first few years, the adrenaline pump is: "Can I do this? Will I be good? Will they love us? Did we rehearse enough?" You know, from about eight years on, that adrenaline pump is gone, but you need adrenaline to perform or you're fucked. So the way people at _Cheers _got pumped was to rehearse less and less, to be less certain.

As the years went on, it got crazier and crazier: "Where's Woody?" "Oh, he called this morning; he's in Berlin because the Wall's coming down." Well, that would piss off John, who would then fly to Seattle to harvest his apples—literally.

Harrelson: I did have a problem with tardiness. Me and John Ratznenberger butted heads a few times, and I think me and Bebe Neuwirth [clashed] a couple of times.

Isaacs: [By the last few seasons] they'd do a reading, and at the end, you'd go around the table, and George would say, "I'll miss Friday and Monday. I'm on SNL this weekend." And Kirstie would say, "I'll miss Friday, I'm going to look at some property in Oregon." So when you [later] did a run-through, you'd have Ted as Sam, you'd have the first A.D. [assistant director] as Norm, the second A.D. as Woody, and you'd have the script girl as Rebecca. If you went behind the bar after the show was over, you'd find all the lines were taped [up everywhere]; they were more interested in the foosball tournament upstairs. But you knew what they could do, and you knew that if something wasn't working, you could fix it during the dress [rehearsal]. Any show is like that. They say the first year they work for you; the second year you work together, and then you work for them.

**Wendt: **People used to admire the loosey-goosey quality we brought to it. We used to chuckle to ourselves and say, "That's because we just learned it five minutes ago."

Sutton: Around year seven or eight, you'd kill yourself when you realized Norm had to enter and you had to come up with a new beer joke.

Cheri Steinkellner: You had all of this history. Everything had been done. And the cast was growing: You kept adding great characters that you wanted to service, and it was really hard to pack everybody in. And all of the regular cast was so loved, you had to give everybody significant moments in every episode and tell a story. So that working the puzzle became really challenging in the later years.

Casey: By the tenth season, we knew Sam had to change, to become more self-aware. It's one thing for a 25-year-old guy to talk about all his conquests; you just sort of go, "Oh, he's a young stud sowing his oats." It's another thing for a 40-year-old to be doing that. That becomes pathetic.

···

In 1992, Danson—who was on the brink of divorce thanks to a public affair with Whoopi Goldberg—solved the problem of Sam's lack of evolution by announcing that he was leaving the show.

Wendt: At the end of season whatever, seven, eight, nine, 10, everyone would go, "What's the deal. How do we all feel about this?" Pretty much everyone said, "I'll do it if you do it." It was always on Ted, ultimately.

Danson: For a couple of years, we were all saying, "Are we going to do this forever?" We were looking for an exit. And then we'd change our minds. For me, I was going through so many changes in my life—separation with my wife, having an affair—that was all very messy and public. It felt like if I really wanted to rock my boat and make changes in my life and who I am and how I am, that would also mean moving on from Cheers.

I don't think it was an emotionally mature decision. I brought the house down around my ears, lit it on fire, and then went "I have to go."

Glen Charles: We had a very long meeting with him, and we knew it was coming. And we totally understood. Eleven years is a long time for a television series, even with a couple of major cast changes, to rejuvenate it, and I think we were feeling what he was feeling: That we'd pretty much gotten everything out of this concept that we could.

Swanson: Jimmy Burrows called me at home and said, "Have you heard?" I could hear the emotion in his voice. It was really bittersweet.

Harrelson: After it became clear Teddy wasn't going to do the show anymore, [a network ec] took me to dinner and said, "We can keep the show going, and you'll be the guy who owns the bar." We hadn't even had our appetizers yet! I said, "Ted Danson's the star, and I can promise people will not want to see it without him." I didn't want to do it without him. Dinner was awkward after that.

_On May 20th, 1993, a staggering 40 million people watched the Cheers finale,_in which Sam ditches the bar and takes off with Diane—only to return alone, having realized they can never be together. The series ends with Sam and the gang hanging out in the bar before he closes up for the night.

Long: I was disappointed that Sam and Diane didn't get together in the very last episode. I had no input whatsoever. I expressed my opinion, but just in passing. It didn't change.

Les Charles: I don't think we ever entertained that idea of Sam and Diane going off together. It seemed like [we'd be] going backwards a little. I'm not sure if that big of a portion of our audience would have been happy with it, because there were people who loved Shelley, but a lot of people liked Rebecca better, or thought Diane was bad for Sam, and so on.

Danson: At the time, my 6-year-old kept thinking my character's name was "Sam Alone," which is kind of brilliant. The funny came out of Sam's sad core: the alcoholic, the sex addict, the person who thinks he's God's gift.

Amy Poehler(comedian): I could watch the series finale every day. When Danson turns the bar's lights out, it's that rare moment in TV where it feels incredibly real and earned and sweet. And that episode's still packed with jokes, you know? I remember watching that [finale], and being so crushed that I wasn't going to see that family again.

Excerpt from Cheers' final episode, "One for the Road":

_Sam: I still keep thinking, though...I want some kind of change in my life. _

Woody: You know something? I hate change. I mean, you know-every day, you wake up, and something's changed. Everything's just changing so fast. I like things to stay the way there are, you know? I like things you can count on.

Sam: You know, you just gave me something to think about, Woody.

Woody: Oh, I'm sorry, Sam. I hate when it someone does that to me.

**Shawn Ryan: **I don't get a sense that Cheers is revered the way it should be by [younger viewers]. Seinfeld and_Friends_ and The Simpsons are probably that generation's touchstones. In my mind, it's a show that should always, always, always be in the pantheon. But can it ever mean to future generations what it meant to us? When something changes TV, it's hard to look back on it, decades later, and appreciate that change.

**Casey: **David [Isaacs] teaches a writing class down at USC, and I speak at his class each semester. For a lot of kids,_ Cheers_ isn't even on their radar.

Staley: I have a son who's almost 19, and I don't think he's ever seen an episode. He asked me recently if it was in black and white. It was like, "Jesus Christ."

Ackerman: When you think of all the great screwball comedies like Capra and Preston Sturges—Jimmy and the Charles brothers did the television version of it. There's nothing like it since. I'd love to have that style come back.

Alley: I didn't care about the show ending at first, because I was doing movies. But when [fall] rolled around, it was "What the fuck is this?" I had nowhere to go. I think it would be great to have a reunion with everybody now, as long as it's just another stupid day at the bar: Rebecca's divorced, Sam's still not married. They're all in the exact same situation.

Glen Charles: We never even considered doing any kind of reunion show. Sam alone at the bar was the last image we wanted. That's where the show started and where it ended. It let people think that there's still a bar in Boston where you can walk in and see this aging baseball player.

Danson: I let my [past] life in peripherally, because I'm interested in what's over there; I want to keep going forward. But there's not anything I do in my life that doesn't go back to Cheers. I get to walk around and have people say "Hey" and smile and laugh. I get bathed in this kind of after-Cheers glow as a direct result of Jimmy, Les, and Glen. I got to play Sam Malone. How cool is that?

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